High school forcing LEDs

[Beans45601]

I recently began working at my old high school, helping them with the lighting for their spring musical.

The space is wonderful and has 5 electrics of strip lights, don't know the manufacturer, but they are 4 system strips (RGBA roundels) and have 100 lamps per strip. For the past 15+ years, they have been using these strip lights. That's been 500 PAR 38 lamps, burning at full, 8+ hours a say, 6+ days a week. As you can imagine, they aren't thrilled at the power usage or the cost of lamps/labor to be constantly changing lamps. Because of this, the began (blindly) changing out the PAR lamps for LED PAR lamps, keeping everything the same. They are about 1/3 through changing out all the lamps for LEDs.

This brings up many issues, the largest for me being that these strip lights are now basically useless. The dimming and color output is awful (as you can imagine). My contact at the school said that the district is telling her that she has to switch to LEDs.

I want to do something about this, but being that I'm only here temporarily and no one seems to understand the technical issues at hand, I'm not sure how (or if I should) move forward. I'd want to advocate for halting the LED retrofit and instead installing several CDM work lights.

Have any of you been in a similar situation? I really think that they are going down a path that will do no one any good, but I'm not sure how much change I could actually make.

 

[Scenemaster60]

Not much you can do. I'd just walk away and avoid the frustration.

 

[NateJanota]

Not much you can do. I'd just walk away and avoid the frustration.

I second this. There are battles you can win, but wars you cannot. If you find yourself completely frustrated at your inability to change the situation, it might be time to find another locale worthy of your efforts and experience.

 

[danTt]

I recently began working at my old high school, helping them with the lighting for their spring musical.

The space is wonderful and has 5 electrics of strip lights, don't know the manufacturer, but they are 4 system strips (RGBA roundels) and have 100 lamps per strip. For the past 15+ years, they have been using these strip lights. That's been 500 PAR 38 lamps, burning at full, 8+ hours a say, 6+ days a week. As you can imagine, they aren't thrilled at the power usage or the cost of lamps/labor to be constantly changing lamps. Because of this, the began (blindly) changing out the PAR lamps for LED PAR lamps, keeping everything the same. They are about 1/3 through changing out all the lamps for LEDs.

This brings up many issues, the largest for me being that these strip lights are now basically useless. The dimming and color output is awful (as you can imagine). My contact at the school said that the district is telling her that she has to switch to LEDs.

I want to do something about this, but being that I'm only here temporarily and no one seems to understand the technical issues at hand, I'm not sure how (or if I should) move forward. I'd want to advocate for halting the LED retrofit and instead installing several CDM work lights.

Have any of you been in a similar situation? I really think that they are going down a path that will do no one any good, but I'm not sure how much change I could actually make.

So the stage lighting is used as work lights? Thats the first thing to fix.

I'd also drag in the contact and everyone she has to answer to to the space and show them the results of changing blindly to LED's. It's very likely that the people making the decisions don't understand the artistic ramifications of their choices, depending on how important the venue is to the district (given that it's still lit entirely by R40 strips, i'm guessing not that important.. but that's another issue). If they see the two options side by side, they may realize their folly. If not, shrug and move on. If they do, there's plenty of LED or similar worklight options these days that could be added for regular use, and save the stage fixtures for stage usage.

 

[Les]

They will probably spend a comparable amount money if they would just remove the strips and put in proper LED fixtures. Even in the lower-mid-range fixtures such as the Elation Sixpar would be a vast improvement.

I've been using 8 Sixpar 200's in a space and they perform really well - replaces a system of 24 par 64's easily. I feel your pain though - in this same space, I swapped about a dozen of the house sconces with incandescent lamps because they began replacing the R40's as they died with standard (non-dimmable) CFL's in various color temps. Didn't even attempt to make it 'correct'. This is a community theatre with no TD and while their intentions are good, the execution and forethought sucks. They did do it right with the Sixpars and Spectra Cyc's though.


Unfortunately, if this space is still running strips, it is doubtful that they have the DMX and control infrastructure to make that an easy transition.

 

[JohnD]

I wonder about the life expectancy of LED lamps in a borderlight with rondel? Not much ventilation.

 

[soundlight]

Option 1: If it's obvious you can't make headway, run, far far away. Not worth the effort.

Option 2: (If you are able to have sway in changes) Scrap the strips entirely, replace every 8' of striplight with a 2' Elation Colour Chorus with the appropriate spread lens.

 

[JD]

I wonder about the life expectancy of LED lamps in a borderlight with rondel? Not much ventilation.

BINGO! When it comes to life, LEDs are fantastic in open fixtures, and die a horrible death in enclosed fixtures.
When it comes to retrofit, airflow is everything. Most of these stand-alone screw-in LEDs run the emitters quite hot to begin with. As the temp goes up life plumits. In a small, sealed enclosure, it may only be a few hours.

 

[JimOC_1]

Maybe you and she can make the case that all replacements must be TCP BR30 dimmable 12 watt red, green , and blue (+ some other offerings) in order to have proper stage lighting.
“They” will choke on the cost, and you open the door to getting a good set of LED strips, and maybe separate LED work lights for good measure.

I don’t know the quality of the TCP lights, so this is not an endorsement of them.
You may want to search “Another BR40 LED retrofit” on this site for SteveB and JD’s comments.

Note that the new Monoprice wide wash LED pars are down to about a dollar per watt.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

Dantt has the answer.

Show that by adding a circuit on each electric with perhaps 4 of the Kreios FLx 90s - one or two circuits total - it would ultimately cost less than relamping the strips with LED. Just sum the wattage. 5 strips x 100 lamps x 23 watts (should be if a 150 equivalent - adjust) is 11,500 watts. 5 x 4 x 90 = 1800 watts. Couple with short life in the enclosed strip and the benefits of the better strips for theatre. Has to be the best money wise. Installing the Kreios is maybe 1500 to 2000/electric so say $8500 (start with every other and see if that isn't good enough) versus 500 LED lamps at $20 is $10,000. Less than a fifth the power.

Find an engineer to help you maybe? Vocal parents/arts supporters?